Our Artists
Since its inception, Jentel has made awards to over 1,500 creatives.
Many alumni have produced work during residency that subsequently received national recognition. Below are a selection of featured Jentel Alumni and their recent activities.
FEATURED ARTISTAlice Driver
Artist StatementAlice Driver is a James Beard Award-winning investigative journalist and public speaker from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. She is the author of Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company (One Signal Publishers, 2024). In 2024, the book won the Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. In 2025, the book was shortlisted for the Brooklyn Library Prize alongside books by Pulitzer Prize-winner Mosab Abu Toha and Windham Campbell Prize-winner Alexis Pauline Gumbs. In 2026, the book will be published in Italian by Ferrobedó. In her work and writing, Driver focuses on the American food system, immigration, and unjust labor practices.
Brooklyn Public Library Prize photo: In 2025, Driver’s book, Life and Death of the American Worker, was shortlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Prize alongside books by Pulitzer Prize-winner Mosab Abu Toha and Windham Campbell Prize-winner Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Driver participated in the Brooklyn Public Library 10th Anniversary Book Prize Shortlist Reading in Brooklyn, NY.
Bellagio photo: In 2025, Driver attended The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency, whose former residents include Maya Angelou and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. While there, she met Mary Robinson, the first woman to become president of Ireland.
Library of Congress Mario Bellatin: Driver recently interviewed the poet Homer Aridjis and the authors Mario Bellatin and Elena Poniatowska in Mexico City for the Library of Congress PALABRA archive.
FEATURED ARTISTVanessa Compton
Artist StatementArt for me has always been a vehicle for social criticism and focusing on issues of our time. How do we talk about the history that divides and binds us together? As a white woman and settler-descendent my history of privilege is consciously and subconsciously woven into how I show up in the world and as an artist. My ancestors were touched by war, and the ensuing grief had a tremendous generational impact on my family. As a new mother, I have been consumed with what it means to love and protect children. What it means within the confines of home and what it means on a national and global scale. I’ve been a collagist for 19 years and, as a dual citizen of both the US and Canada, I often work within the Western genre to attempt to reflect back on what is happening here on Turtle Island. The traditional Western genre feels like the same story over and over again that parallels the living history we are bearing witness to. Stories that perpetuate the idea of regeneration through violence, and that masculinity has to be reinforced by constant violence. Stories with heavy-handed notions of freedom and unfreedom. Stories of liberal individualism which assume that the conditions of the Western frontier make everyone equal. Though I have most definitely been seduced by these stories, my work is an attempt to radically counter these narratives.
JENTEL ALUMNI
We want to feature you!
Jentel enjoys seeing your exhibition announcements, new publishings, awards, and much more. We also enjoy sharing our alumni’s work on our website and social media.
For more information please reach out to alumni@jentelarts.org.
Jentel Artist Residency + YouTube
Find Jentel Artist Residency on YouTube and subscribe to our channel to watch recordings of all Jentel Presents monthly presentations, view studio tours from resident artists, and more.
